The best things in life....

I'm very excited about PocketCiv. One of my all-time favourite games is Civilization, but finding opponents and time to play is very uncommon these days. Trumpeted Civ-lite games have failed to satisfy, but this one is different. It's solo for one thing, so the opponent problem vanishes, and it's not actually that light either. The clever trick is that this can be played on pencil and paper - all you need is the deck of event cards and the rules. This means that this can be played in odd moments on the train or at home, and thinking about your little paper civilization and its problems rapidly becomes a small obsession. My first attempt got wiped out in Era 1 by a sequence of earthquakes, sandstorms and volcanoes. Undeterred I drew a nice coloured map of Egypt and set off again - the gods were kinder this time and I have just finished Era 2 with 4 cities. Harder times ahead I expect though! This is great stuff - if it wasn't free I would call it my best purchase for some while.